Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers either to the gradual cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture or to an ideological program in the age of emancipation promoting conformity as a potential solution to historic Jewish marginalization.
Terminology
Professor of Modern Jewish History Todd Endelman used the following terms to describe various forms of Jewish assimilation:- Radical assimilation: 'an umbrella term referring to all the routes Jews traveled to lose their Jewishness, whether that was their intention or not'.
- * Conversion: 'the religious act of formally embracing Christianity'.
- * Secession: 'the act of legally withdrawing from the Jewish community—whether or not conversion to Christianity followed.' Endelman noted that secession did not become available until the late 19th century, and only in Central Europe.
- * Intermarriage: 'the union between a Christian and Jew'. Endelman excluded marriages between baptized Jews and Christians or between Jews and ex-Christians from this definition, since they were legally and religiously considered 'endogamous'.
- * Passing: 'the attempt to flee the Jewish community by assuming a non-Jewish identity and hiding evidence of a Jewish birth and upbringing'. According to Endelman, most people in this category never converted to Christianity, because that would have revealed they had once been Jews.
The usage of the term de-Judaization is somewhat ambiguous. For example, in a 1992 debate with Israeli intellectual A. B. Yehoshua, Palestinian intellectual Anton Shammas used it in an emancipatory sense: 'I advocate the de-Judaization and de-Zionization of Israel... I'm asking for a new definition of the word 'Israeli,' so that it will include me as well', in order to emancipate Arab citizens of Israel as equal citizens to Jewish Israelis. However, it is mostly used in a negative sense to describe a discriminatory governmental policy aimed at forcibly erasing the allegedly Jewish character of someone or something, for example the 'de-Judaization of Jewish identity in the Soviet Union', or the 'de-Judaization' of the sciences in Nazi Germany by sacking Jewish scientists, deleting them from the education canon and removing any other perceived 'Jewish influences', in an attempt to make science 'authentically German'. Michael Shafir also described the de-emphasis or erasure of the Jewishness of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the historiography, monuments and memorials of Eastern European Communist regimes as a negative form of 'de-Judaization', which he argued could lead to "Holocaust trivialization" and empower Holocaust deniers.
In order to prevent assimilation, Jewish laws keep an observant Jew from being close to a non-Jew, including the food prohibition Pas Yisroel and Bishul Yisrael and Kosher wine.
History
Hellenization
In 332 BCE, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered the Levant, where most Jews lived at the time, starting the Hellenistic period. Although Koine Greek became the dominant language of the elite, and the succeeding Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire waged the Syrian Wars for control of the Levant, the Hellenistic rulers mostly did not interfere with the Hebrews' culture, religion and internal politics. After driving out the Ptolemees in 198 BCE, the Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great lowered taxes in the region and formally affirmed the Judeans' religious and political autonomy, stimulating the voluntary Hellenization of especially the upper stratum of the population, such as the clergy, the aristocracy and the merchantry. Tensions rose after Jason usurped the High Priesthood in Jerusalem and adopted a pro-Hellenic policy in 175 BCE. Three years later, king Antiochus IV Epiphanes expelled Jason and replaced him with Menelaus in order to have him forcefully Hellenise the region. After reversing a counter-coup by the moderate Jason, Menelaus tried to eradicate the Judaic religion, eventually leading traditionalist orthodox Jews to start the anti-Hellenic Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucids and pro-Hellenic Jews. After a series of battles, the Seleucids were eventually defeated, and the Maccabees achieved de facto independence as the Hasmonean dynasty, reversing much of the Hellenization process. The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah stems from this revolt.The priestly Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabees and their Sadducee supporters soon fully Hellenized as well in the late 2nd and early 1st century BCE; they were opposed by the Aramaic-speaking traditionalist Pharisees. Alexandria in Egypt had been an important Hellenistic Jewish cultural centre since its founding in 332 BCE, and by the 1st century CE the city had a large population of Hellenized Jews such as Philo of Alexandria. Some of the Deuterocanonical books that some Jewish and Christian denominations today consider sacred scripture, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, 3 Maccabees and Additions to Esther, were written in Jewish Koine Greek in Alexandria by these Hellenized Jews. Historian Josephus initially participated in the Judean faction of the First Jewish–Roman War, but surrendered in 67 and settled in Rome, where he wrote The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. He tried to reconcile the Jewry with the Greco-Roman world, and although a defender of the Jewish religion and culture against anti-Jewish writers such as Apion, Josephus rejected Jewish nationalism.
Age of Enlightenment
Use of the vernacular—as opposed to Yiddish or the liturgical Hebrew—is an example of acculturation, one of the key characteristics of Jewish assimilation in the modern era. Jewish assimilation began anew among Ashkenazi Jews on an extensive scale towards the end of the 18th century in Western Europe, especially Germany, as the Haskalah emerged as a culture. The orthodox Jewish Berlin-based Moses Mendelssohn became a leading Haskalah figure, advocating amongst other things for Jews to embrace the German language instead of Yiddish, as well as translating the Hebrew Bible to German. This had much success especially amongst Western European Jews, who started to abandon Yiddish in favour of the nationally dominant languages, but less amongst Eastern European Jews; for example, Polish rabbis banned Mendelssohn's translation because they believed 'the Bible should only be read in the holy Hebrew language.' Reasons cited for its initial success included hope for better opportunities accompanying assimilation into the non-Jewish European communities, especially among the upper classes. "The concentration of the Jewish population in large cities had a strong impact on their lifestyle and made them more visible in the economy and in the culture." As legal emancipation remained incomplete in Germany, many upper-middle class urban Jews propagated Enlightenment ideals, which they believed would allow them to improve their social standing. "The ideologues consequently envisioned a regeneration of German Jewry that would gain it equal rights but would also lead to the formation of a new kind of Jew based on its ideal of man."Both the Christian and Jewish communities were divided concerning answers to what was known as the Jewish question. The question, coming during the rise of nationalism in Europe, included the extent to which each nation could integrate its Jewish citizens, and if not integrated, how should they be treated and the question solved. The breakdown of the traditional Jewish communal structure, the Kehilla, marked the declining perception of a distinct Jewish nationality among those Jews that promoted emancipation. However, attempts to reduce Judaism to a confession did not necessarily induce an increase in tolerance of the Jews on the part of the majority society.
This led some Jews to philosophical questions of Jewish identity and Who is a Jew?. The propriety of assimilation, and various paths toward it were among the earliest internal debates of the emancipation era, including whether and to what extent Jews should relinquish their right to uniqueness in return for civic equality. These debates initially took place within the diaspora, a population with a revered historical Biblical homeland, but without a state of their own for nearly 2,000 years.
As an alternative to a more liberal practice of Judaism, assimilation also took the form of conversion to Christianity. None of the descendants of Moses Mendelssohn retained the Jewish religion. Assimilationists saw Jewish cultural distinctiveness and tribalism as the root of antisemitic hostility and thus felt that Jewish social bonds needed to be weakened.
19th century
During the ancien Régime in Europe, the only way to leave Judaism behind was to become a Christian, but in the 19th century, liberal states such as France, Britain and the United States started allowing people who were raised Jewish to identify with neither religion, either through religious indeterminacy or by fully embracing irreligion. In the late 19th century, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary even allowed Jews to change their legal status and formally register as a non-Jew. Scholars call this the emancipation era, beginning on 27 September 1791, when Jews in France were first granted full citizenship without any conditions by the French Revolutionary parliament.Scholars examining the 19th-century emancipation processes of European Jews distinguish between two models:
- Unconditional emancipation, dominant in Western Europe and with some influence in Central Europe, encouraged individual Jews to voluntarily abandon some or all aspects of their Jewish life and participate in the non-Jewish majority culture, mostly for their own benefit if they so chose.
- Conditional emancipation, dominant in Central and Eastern Europe and with some influence in Western Europe, put social and eventually political pressure on all Jews to abandon some or all aspects of their Jewish life and participate in the non-Jewish majority culture, mostly for the benefit of the majority.
- Finally, the governments of some states, most notably Romania and Russia, showed no significant interest in emancipating, integrating or assimilating the Jewry. Some ethnic nationalist groups elsewhere in Europe, such as the Young Czechs, also doubted the 'assimilability' of the Jews into the nascent Czech nation.
Jewish academics in the nineteenth century partook in social scientific studies concerning anti-Semitic notions of Jewish degeneration. Their active role in this intellectual discussion served as both a calculated response to anti-Semitic allegations and a way to explore common social bonds uniting Jews as the autonomous community had been in full decline. Many Jewish social scientists did not entirely disagree with the ideas of distinct Jewish traits conceived by anti-Semites. This lent itself well to the contentious debate over assimilatory practices. "The political and social message of this immutable Jewish nature was clear: the 'Jewish body' was racially different and pathological, and opponents of emancipation and integration were correct in insisting that Jews were unfit to be part of a healthy modern nation-state." Participating in the exploration of Jewish lineage can also be seen as a form of appeasement as "It allowed Jewish social scientists to fill the roles of apologist and reformer, to defend their own people based on the knowledge and insights of science."